Soldiers have always carried a significant load when on patrol or in battle. In the recent past the load was carried in large marching packs, smaller day packs and their immediate fighting order on a load carriage vest. This vest contained all the immediate ammunition, grenades, flashlight, water, first aid and other essential smaller equipment that a soldier is required to have immediately at hand. More recently the modern soldier wears ballistic protection or body armour vest that also functions as a load carriage or tactical vest. This vest may now carry a multitude of electronic equipment such as inter and intra-squad radios, GPS, flashlight, electronic displays, keypads and computer interface devices.
With the advent of the future soldier, this electronic burden has become an even greater contributor of the overall fighting order load and has created a considerable logistic burden with respect to the battery management of all the electronic devices the soldier is carrying. The battery burden can easily be 3-6 different battery types that in conjunction with spares weigh as much as 4 kg for a 24 hour mission. A significant logistic issue is not only the physical weight of the batteries, but the fact that soldiers are prone to replacing their electronic device batteries whenever they think the ones installed are not sufficiently fresh. As the devices rarely have a battery energy gauge, studies have found soldiers typically throw away up to 70% of the energy they have been carrying. This is extremely expensive power that is thrown away from both the perspective of the soldier who carried it but never used it and the logistic replenishment support cost. In addition soldiers do not know what batteries to take on a mission as different devices use their own type of battery and the use of equipment will change with the tactical scenario. Frequently a soldier may not be re-supplied within the expected time frame.
A favoured option in future soldier vest designs is the use of a central power system using larger high capacity batteries, that power an integrated power and data harness. Power is fed to various nodes on the garment to supply the electronic devices carried by the soldier with power and data via quick-connect connectors. Data is also required to provide a Central Power Management (CPM) capability. The various devices are interrogated by the CPM as to their state of charge and are charged according to priority and amount of central power remaining. As central power is lost, the CPM can start removing lower priority devices from the power, saving the power for the high priority devices.
The use of cables and providing power and data connections to a soldiers equipment is a considerable problem as the cables snag, connectors break and are subject to damage by the environment. It is also very difficult to connect equipment with gloved hands in an expeditious fashion when the equipment is then to be stowed in pockets, during for example an intense tactical situation such as a fire fight.
In addition to the above equipment power and data issues, the soldiers in a unit are assigned different roles, are provided with different electronic devices, each of which may be required to be used at different intervals and require being placed in different locations on the load carriage vest. The reconfiguration problem is compounded by the fact that all the electronic and non electronic devices and equipment require their own specialized pockets as the size and shapes of objects carried has a large range. Further each soldier may have different personal preferences or may be assigned a new role which require his equipment to be reconfigured. For example the position of various devices on a vest will change depending on if the soldier shoots form the left or right shoulder. Many existing soldier systems cannot accommodate soldiers that shoot using the left shoulder because the pockets cannot be reconfigured. To meet the challenge of fighting order and load carriage equipment reconfiguration, most militaries have designed and now use a load bearing equipment such as a load carriage vest, tactical vest, tactical pants and other garments that allow the pockets to be moved around or reconfigured to a very considerable extent.
I hereby incorporate by reference my U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/922,788 (Publication No. 20090218884) entitled “Contactless Battery Charging Apparel”. The application describes sequential power transmission between a central power source carried on a soldier or person that is distributed through a wiring harness or conductive fabric worn on the soldier to inductive nodes located at various locations on torso of the soldier. The fixed position inductive power transfer nodes allow the transfer of power to rechargeable batteries in electronic devices distributed on the soldier without having physical contact or wires between the soldier and the components. The inductively coupled primary and secondary coils allow the transfer of power based on air core transformer theory.
I also incorporate by reference my U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/923,895 (Publication Number US 2011-0031928-A1) entitled “Soldier System Wireless Power and Data Transmission”. The application describes the use of inductive power and data transmission on a soldier system providing improved power management through the use of a central battery, power management system, inductively charged hand electronic devices containing rechargeable batteries. So that the devices can be truly wireless without any power or data cables connecting them to the soldier, the application also describes the use of inductive data transmission between the devices and the soldier system that could use Near Field Communication as a platform.
All devices connected to the power and data harness can be independently controlled by the central power management system. The design of the garment may not allow for a central power management system or the need for the exchange of power management data. In this case the modular pockets primary circuit for each device works autonomously drawing power to charge its respective device as needed until the central power source, such as a larger capacity battery or fuel cell is depleted. When a central power supply is changed out, it can be hot swapped as all the distributed electronic devices remain powered by their own internal battery.